How a London Art Gallery Went All NFT w/ Mark Dale

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1:25Mark Dale, founder of W1 Curates. Welcome to the Real Vision Crypto Daily Briefing. Thanks for having me, buddy. Thank you. Oh, it's my absolute pleasure. I'm so excited to get into our conversation. Before we jump into our conversation about digital art, let's do a quick market update because things have been a little bit hairy over the last 24 hours. Bitcoin is down over the last 24 hours. It's trading around$26 ,000. And we're seeing a bit of a recovery since the initial slide. Ether is doing a little bit better than Bitcoin, it turns out. The current price is above$1 ,800. And that's all after news that the SEC has sued Coinbase.

2:04This was widely expected after the recent Wells notice. The SEC is alleging Coinbase is running an unregistered securities exchange. The lawsuit comes a day after a similar action by the SEC against Binance and its CEO, Shengpeng Zhao. We'll continue to have conversations about what this means with lawyers and other experts throughout the week on Crypto Daily Briefing. But I really want to get into our conversation with Mark today. Mark, thank you so much for joining us today. Would you mind telling us a bit about your background and how you found yourself launching and running an NFT gallery space?

2:42um yeah so taking it back from the beginning I worked in a traditional uh traditional art gallery on Bond Street um about 20 years ago now um we was I was seeing a lot of artists transitioning from traditional into digital or taking traditional paintings and putting a digital twist on them we was always tasked with trying to source or help with the technology to make that happen and it wasn't it was 20 years ago it just wasn't there you know you've seen these amazing artworks that were were being brought to life the content looked amazing but then as soon as it transitioned over onto whatever format you'd be playing it on if it wasn't just a normal commercial screen then it would let it down so we kind of set out on a bit of a mission or I set out on a mission to build a LED screen that represented an artist's colour palette true to form.

3:44So by saying that we had many trips back and forth from Shenzhen, managed to find out what components worked best within a screen, what was most reliable and what components didn't let the artist's artwork down. So for instance, a lot of main LED companies use mixed-batched LEDs. when they're using the mid-spatch LEDs they're always a different variation of color so that affects the color palette and then you also see different colored diodes that are used so if you're not using the darkest of diode what will happen is you'll be shining a white light through the back of a gray diode which that you lose the depth the contrast and sort of all that kind of amazing black look if you're working with a lot of black content so we kind of worked out over a few years what what product we was happy with was a bit hesitant to take it to market so we started to do installations in some high net worth clients houses so if they had a one in particular client had a Picasso we went to their house we installed this huge six meter by three meter screen in their house um we then photographed the Picasso filmed it the Picasso went into storage we put the the original artwork but kind of in a digital format on on the person's uh screen in their house they loved it said look i've got another three houses could you do those so we we kind of rolled it out across all their estate and then it was a friend of a friend oh my friend's just seen this can you come and do that can you come and do that so we probably spent best part of five to six years flying around the world with this new product installing digital screens in a large format in people's houses to show their traditional art, which was really cool.

5:31And then lucky enough, we got approached by a company called Flannels on Oxford Street. They said, look, we're opening a flagship store. At the same time, we secured the contract to do the whole Fraser Group and Flannels Estate. So we was already doing tech for the company for their kind of like commercial side of it. And they was like, look, we love what you're doing with the art. why don't you do something temporarily while we're opening the store? So it was always going to be a temporary installation on Oxford Street. We put it up and we was testing for about two years. And then we, I mean, we had a lot of contacts in the traditional art world, but we was kind of reaching out and they said, oh no, it's a billboard.

6:12It's this, it's that. And we was kind of trying to explain that there's a lot of thought gone into this. It's not just the wind is, you know, when it's in direct sunlight, the screens will raise in brightness. They drop down in the evening. There's a lot of stuff behind the scenes that we put into this. So it didn't look like a billboard, although with the traditional art world, it was it took a while of convincing. Then all of a sudden we were speaking to a friend of ours, David LaChapelle. He agreed to let us do an exhibition with him. and from then on it just it just blew up um we was working with we've worked with gregosian we've worked with um christie's bonhams um featured um jeff coons tracy emin um michael craig martin david bailey so from the traditional art world we kind of we lay it up really quickly and that was probably just at the start of the pandemic um but obviously galleries were closing people can do exhibitions.

7:12So we become more valuable to the traditional art world by having this space. What, no matter what was happening in the world, it could always run. So that kind of gave us a real boost. And obviously, once we started working with these names, kind of, when we was approaching an artist, we drop a few names, they'd look on our website and be like, right, these guys, these guys are okay, because the blue chip level we was working at. So we launched the outside and then through the pandemic obviously there was a lot more digital art being exposed it's been there for years but it's it was just being exposed more and i was visiting um a lot of fairs going to a lot of conferences and just i just couldn't i from from having a lot of friends in the traditional art world and they were looking at this kind of like beautiful artwork but on a TV screen, you could see that their head couldn't get round.

8:09What is the difference and they're comparing it to like screensavers and things like this. And I was just thinking, I don't think these guys have been given the best chance these digital artists who like I mean, they're phenomenal, who just have put hours and hours into making this work for then it to be not represented in the right way. So I was I was lucky enough to be able to convince flannels to give me their basement after after quite some time. They gave me the whole basement. We've turned it into a four 400 square meter gallery that launched in August this year. Since then we featured six and five Maxim's Escoff recently featured people joined forces with 33 NFT Cosmo Dimitri group featured Andre Reisinger.

9:02Yeah, I mean, it's just gone from strength to strength. So now we're kind of focusing on this year, we're heavily focusing on digital art where we've opened the gallery. Next year, we're going to be focusing on bridging the gap between traditional and digital and taking some artists who are in the digital space into doing physical objects and stuff within the gallery. and then we'll take in some traditional artists into the digital space to let them exhibit in a digital way rather than a traditional way such as a canvas or sculpture. Yeah, I mean, what I find so fascinating about your story and the story of W1 Curates is that it really is the natural evolution of art and art history and the way in which galleries sort of need to adjust to the changing of the times.

9:48And, you know, what we've seen, especially in the traditional art markets, is minus your Sotheby's, your Christie's, your Gagosian, there's a lot of pushback against digital art and NFTs. Obviously, those are sort of two separate things. Digital arts can exist not as NFTs, but they're getting conflated. So have you faced any criticism from your old colleagues in the traditional art world about what the fuck are you doing with these scamming NFT guys? I mean, even though you are working with the best of the best, has there been any pushback? To be honest, we're in a real niche situation where we're still working with a lot of traditional artists and a lot of traditional institutions.

10:30And we are featuring the biggest digital artists in the space. So you get the odd comment from time to time. But we've gone into this so heavily. Like we've also just opened a creative studio where we're supporting these projects from day one. We've opened a recording studio. We've opened a smaller immersive space in Shoreditch. We've just collaborated with Damien Lazarus. We've just done something last week for the Renaissance show with Beyonce. We're at a level where people are kind of, they're commenting, but they can't really say too much because we keep kind of being lucky enough to exhibit these amazing artists or musicians or, you know, we're kind of pushing the boundaries a little bit with digital art by, you know what is what is digital art what is our art music culture is all connected together so we're we're playing our part in just not stereotyping ourselves down one road and doing a wide variety of collaborations that that is digital art because it's on a digital screen so you know wherever it comes from for us art is art and you know we will support that um and and that's what we're doing going forward so so in answer to your question yeah we've had a few comments but I think we're pretty much left alone, which is quite good.

11:50Yes, I think it is quite good. And especially considering the great work you guys have been doing, especially with the Beeple and the Cosmo Medici show you guys did very recently. Can you talk to me a little bit of how that came together? And is there any difference working with a digital artist versus a digital NFT artist like Beeple? Beeple's amazing. He's really cool. um we so we we done a collaboration last year for freeze um with um 33 nft and uh cosmo medici group so last year we exhibited during freeze the whole collection of cosmos and 33 i got richard mill to sponsor it uh so we've done like a huge dinner for uh 50 people 25 of richard mill's biggest collectors 25 artists so we had we had Wisby there we had Andre Ressinger, Maxim, various different artists and we've done like a panel talk to talk about it so this year we was like right okay let's let's do something with Beephole and Cosmo was like okay Cosmo just acquired some some works he acquired six or eight physical works and digital works that that paired together So we just continued to talk and then we met up in Miami for Art Basel.

13:08And then from then it was like, right, let's do it. Obviously, the guys started to hear about our space. B-Pole was opening his space in Charlestown as well. So they was already making content on that scale. So they said, look, if we just, if we give you the content, can you do that? I mean, and that's what's happening quite a lot, really. A lot of the artists are saying, well, look, we'll give you the content and you make. So we curate the exhibition together. and then there's a back and forth process before it gets signed off. But that all come about through 33 and Cosmo. And then we followed.

13:40So we had the next exhibition. The first night we'd done a dinner and a panel talk. I managed to get Nick Knight to sit on a panel with myself and Beeple to talk about traditional art, where it's crossing over and what's going on, which was really cool. the second night we got audio fly to to flying from ibiza and play a gig where we had i think we had like three and a half to four thousand people arrive on the night so that was huge and then we'd done a book signing after we'd done a small visual podcast and then he left it was like a whirlwind he was then we had him for three days he got here he smiled he greeted everyone and uh quick turnaround and he left and then um a couple of weeks ago we released the second part to the exhibition, which is the physical artworks.

14:28So that was released at our studio, which is on our website, if anyone wants to see that. Yeah. Well, before we keep going, I want to just remind everybody watching to join the conversation and join us in the chat. Put down your questions wherever you're watching. We'll ask the best ones on air. Remember, Real Vision members take priority, But the good news is crypto membership is free. Go to realvision.com backslash crypto to sign up. And if you're watching on YouTube, tweet this link and follow Real Vision at Real Vision on Twitter. So, Mark, one of the things I'm curious about is, are you guys at all exploring blockchain technology or are you guys focused solely on the exhibition of it with these screens?

15:15So at the moment, we're focusing on what we tend to do is we tend to try and be really good at one thing and then branch out rather than try and do everything. So we're trying to be like the go to place for people to build projects or release projects or, you know, or help someone on the way to releasing something. So with the one stop kind of shop mentality, you could come to our creative studio, build a whole project, pick it up, test it in the studio and then drop it on Oxford Street. Or you could basically have the project ready, drop it on Oxford Street. So we're planning on opening sites globally and we're kind of leaving the specialist, I like you mentioned, blockchain to be involved.

16:02We will kind of let everyone stick to what they know best. So even when an artist comes to us and says, you know, I'd like to release the work at the same time. And we don't pigeonhole people into making a decision. We kind of we'd like to say if someone wants to release an artwork and they're not too sure what marketplace to release it on, we won't have low influence in that. We'll just say, look, whatever you decide will support you as an artist. Working in galleries for many years, I saw a lot of artists, traditional galleries kind of. they'd get chewed up a little bit and spat out and then the relationship would fall full out of bed and we're kind of we're here for the long run and for us it's about putting the artist first and doing what they're comfortable with so whether the artist brings something a project that they're doing already on a blockchain or whether they're doing it with a marketplace we try to stay as open as possible so at the moment we're just focusing on the venues the place to go the people to, we're the people to go to if you want to release a project and we can make that happen in any way.

17:02And then we'll start layering up once we've got our multiple locations. Oh, I love that. And so one of the questions I have about you guys, are you representing artists at all in the traditional gallery way that like Gagosian represents certain artists? Or are you more, is it more sort of looser that it's just, you guys are trying to create sort of in the Web3 ethos just a community of creators that are supporting each other and lifting each other up for me it's about community it's about supporting all these artists and being part of a bigger picture um i don't want to hate contracts hate putting people in contracts um this this is the future this is where it's going we're we've just been signed by richard mill we're doing four projects with them a year.

17:49We've got Silverstone Grand Prix where we're doing the whole art project for that. We're just about to release a project with Creed. We've got some big brands talking to us and it's more important for us to have a black book of people that trust us that we can work with than trying to screw people down into contracts. Everyone in the digital space is like if we all work together, we grow together and we get to where we want to be, where it's a bit more closed door in the traditional market, as you know. So we're just trying to kind of lean on the contacts we got, the friends we've got, a friend will recommend a friend and just trying to do it as loosely as possible.

18:32So we leave options to grow rather than signing certain artists. And it's, you know, we want to support the artists, not sign them into contracts, basically. Yeah, I mean, that's absolutely the ethos of Web3, and I think it's perfect that you guys have truly embraced that. One thing I'm curious about is, as you're talking to these artists that you are all working with and helping build communities around, have you found that there's been any sort of sea change in enthusiasm, considering the fact that the traditional art market and the NFT market, more specifically, are quite down? yeah they're there look this there's still a hell of a lot of money around because people are still pushing for big projects people are still buying artwork everyone's just a bit more cautious i think like the the digital artists who were getting these big numbers had been a little bit more cautious a lot of them seem to have in their head that if their work goes on the blockchain and it's not minted then that looks bad for them um so they're kind of picking up the they're picking up the method of saying, okay, well, look, we'll do an exhibition or we'll do a show, but everything would be inquiry only.

19:43And once the person has bought the artwork, then they'll mint it and sell it to the artwork. So that's happening a lot. A lot of the artists are saying, look, we've done quite well, we'll just wait until the market goes back. And some of them are saying, look, I'm not even interested in selling the work at the moment. For me, working with you is more about me expressing myself and getting an exhibition, physical exhibition under my belt where we can invite people to see it in a different format. So I think every artist we work with is on a different mission. Some are working with a lot of brands.

20:13Some are, you know, Andre Resinger's just done something with the or six and fives just done another big project. There's loads of these guys who are already working with brands who are kind of now they're being signed by instead of being the person designing stuff for the brand, they're being signed as an artist for the brand, which is super excited. So I think a lot of people are taking up different avenues. And the market will come back round. It's the art market follows the it's the car market, the watch market, the luxury market, it just spiked so much it had to reset. So you know, some people haven't experienced that before a kind of losing their losing their mind.

20:51And they're like, Oh, my God, the whole world's ending. And other people like that, it's just an adjust and that, you know, and then we carry on. I think that I think the whole adjustment what's happened is a really good thing. because it's, you know, they're because they're, I can understand from certain people looking there, there was a lot of chances kind of, I'm just going to do this or do this project or that project. And, and that, that gives the art market a bad name because people are just, people are just in it for the money and the quick buck where when something like this happens, that all kind of disappears a little bit.

21:25And it's the guys who are actually here for longevity, thinking about their careers, that, that will get somewhere. And that's, you know, I think the whole adjustment has been a good thing. And, yeah, I'm just looking forward to seeing some amazing stuff come out of this. Yeah, that's really – I really love that. And it's so interesting to me because, you know, people talk about these down markets, these bear markets as time to build. But usually they're talking about VCs and coders and engineers and all that. But even in art, you know, this is the time to build. My dad is an art collector, and I can remember the cycles of art.

22:04And it very much corresponds to the actual markets, as we all know. Once we get into a bear market and liquidity tightens up, people start trying to sell some of their more physical art pieces, taking a bit of a loss. There's not as much demand. So obviously, because it's crypto, the whole NFT digital art side is on steroids, so it feels even more intense. But at the end of the day, I really do think that, you know, this is just another cycle. And those who, you know, really care about the art and put the art first over profits are going to go out and survive. And so on that sense, what are some of the more up and coming artists you guys have been working with that you're really excited to, you know, be working with and see what they produce?

22:45OK, so we've got we have got I've just gone dead. My mind is we've got Kid 8, who's launching in July. He's launching with physical sculptures and we've got an amazing project with him. He's also there's another little twist to the Kid 8 project, which I won't give too much away, but it will become apparent next month. We are working with Ash Thorpe. He's coming up during Freeze. We're working with G Monk, both who are doing some like epic, epic stuff. So there they have a couple of the names we've got coming up this year. and then we're also doing something big during freeze with a big established auction house or blue chip gallery, should I say.

23:32Well, very exciting. One thing that I wanted to sort of touch back on is are you seeing more NFT-minded artists getting into physical art as well, like we've seen with Beeple? Is that... Yeah. Definitely, definitely. Definitely. I think what people, like the feedback I'm getting from the digital artists is the thing to do is, if you're a traditional art collector, you want to purchase a piece of art, you want to put it on your wall, or you want to put a sculpture in your house, you want to touch it, you want to feel it, you want to be part of it. So with digital art, a lot of these digital artists are right, how can I bring my digital art into that?

24:19into that world where someone can literally touch it feel it and it become part of the interior of their their house or office or wherever it may be um there's a lot of artists now transitioning into that space and taking like bpulse human one and things similar to that where they're making like they're making sculptures with a digital element to it or some people are okay well if i you know if with kid eight he's got his kind of kid eight uh small figure that walks around that if i made that as a sculpture would that be someone transitioning from buying a sculpture because then you may have a screen behind it where you've got like an animation of the physical sculpture um i think that's a really clever move and i can see a lot of people a lot of people then transitioning from traditional into digital because it kind of goes hand in hand uh cosmo just bought eight works from bpoll where they're physical canvases but they've got an nft attached to them um a lot of brands like the nft being attached to art like art is for me there's two different things there's an nft and there's digital art and there's all i've always looked at it as digital art now i personally think nfts will be really useful for a lot of things and i think just because i mean it's glad they was connected together because it kind of looped it all out.

25:44But I think the way that people are connecting the two together should be kind of forgotten about a little bit. It should be like, there's digital art. And if you want to sell it by doing it as an NFT, then do it as an NFT. But if you just want to sell it as a piece of digital art, then that's fine. Because I was selling digital art in the gallery works in the Fine Arts Society, which was one of the most traditional galleries in the whole of the UK. 20 years ago, they'd sell a TV with an artwork on it and put a beautiful ornate frame around it. It's been going on for years. That didn't need an NFT attached to it.

26:17So it's like, you know, digital art for me is digital art. And the NFT thing is going to be very useful, very useful. And, you know, people automatically, when you say NFT, we'll talk about it dropping in money and stuff like that. But for me, it's not the case. I just kind of ignore that. Yeah, very well said. Very well said. So just want to take a quick question from one of our audience members, Ralph. I hope this is Ralph Humphrey, one of our favorite viewers. He says it looks cool, but I can see pushback against energy consumption. So obviously, this is probably a little bit in with the whole, you know, Bitcoin mining thing.

26:56But how is the energy consumption on your gallery and these frames? I assume you guys have really worked it out. 100 % yeah so basically the when you've with led screen the higher the brightness is the more consumption they'll pull so our screens are always on 30 % during the day they fluctuate up to 30 to 35 to maybe 40 % so there if you look at our screen compared to any other screen on on Oxford Street there's no glare it doesn't light up the whole road it's it's done in a certain way there's different sensors on each window, individual window that turns the screen up and down. And also our screens physically turn off when they're when they're playing black content, the screens off.

27:41So that's the only way we could get this depth and this black, whereas the other screens on from a commercial, any commercial company, there'll be lighting backlit gray, which gives you that washed out. So look, it's a digital screen, it uses energy, we can't deny that. But we've done everything we can to pull that back as much as we can and be as efficient as possible. Absolutely. And it sounds like the overall goal is to represent the art as perfectly as possible, which means you're not going to be blasting a Picasso out at 100 lumen or whatever it is. Yeah, exactly. You're reducing it to equal, which is on the lower end of that brightness level.

28:22We had a lot of, yeah, I mean, when I launched, when I first launched W1Q8s, we had the local authorities in within about a week trying to shut us down. So I've had a court battle. I've had to explain this in court about what we're doing and, you know, what technology we're using and what we're doing to protect the environment and what process we thought about to make it fit in with the current environment and make it pleasing to the local buildings around it. So we actually won that court case, which was great. And then, and then we went on to work with, to work with the local authorities to do another exhibition where we worked with a guy called Anthony James, his sculptures in the back there.

29:07We had 250 ,000 visitors in less than three months to a, it was a digital art exhibition, but with kind of physical digital objects. We've done that with the local authorities. And since then they've left us alone. And they're really happy with and we tend to collaborate once a month. So I can assure you we've been grilled about this, but we're in a good place. I assume as much. I assume as much. Well, Mark, it's been absolutely a real pleasure speaking with you today. I'm just so impressed that instead of, you know, immediately pivoting away, you recognize that this moment is part of the evolution of art all the way back from cave paintings today.

29:49It's all one big spectrum that we're just existing on. and that you are ultimately embracing the Web3 ethos of it's all about community and artist rights and all of that. So before we let you go today, any final thoughts you want to leave our viewers with? No, not at all. I just, you know, with W1 Creates is here, we support emerging talent at our smaller gallery. We support established artists at our bigger gallery. We're now venturing out into, you know, if you're doing an immersive experience, you need music, you need audio, which is why we launched our recording studios, just done a project with Damien Lazarus.

30:29We've got Seth Trotter coming up. So we're doing a lot of stuff about house tech, digital artists, combining the two together. So, you know, any creatives want to get out there, want a hand, want to, you know, to be pointed in the right direction, then give us a shout. We're here to help. And yeah, and let's continue to push this huge wave and see where it can go. We're looking to expand globally. So we're here to talk. Oh, I love that. Well, thank you so much. That's it for today. Check out the Real Vision website. We're currently running a Festival of Learning campaign focused on AI. You can get seven days of Real Vision premium access and insights for free.

31:11Head to realvision.com backslash festival of learning. We'll be back again tomorrow with Adam Nash from DAFI. See you at 9 a.m. specific time, noon Eastern and 5 p.m. London time. Thanks for watching, everybody.